Josh has written about St. Paul public schools and higher education for the Pioneer Press since 2014, 11 years after the paper first published his byline as a University of Minnesota intern. He did a two-year stint on city government and crime in Austin, Minn., and spent seven years in Sioux Falls, S.D. covering crime and education, as well as editing. Josh was good at baseball once. Now he plays tennis against old men.

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A $5 million donation from a St. Paul woman’s estate will support the University of Minnesota’s Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch. The gift comes from the estate of Hella Mears, who was born in Germany, worked as an actress and came to the United States on the dime of inventor Norman Mears, whom she later married. Norman Mears is...

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and negotiators from its Inter Faculty Organization have tentatively agreed to a new contract, union officials said. The agreement stipulates a 1.6 percent salary increase for union faculty this school year, retroactive to July 1, a 2.4 percent pay bump in 2018-19, and improvements to employees’ health and dental benefits. It moves up professors’ career...

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